Minion Cake

Smash Cake

Strawberry Buttercream Ruffle Cake

White cake and cupcakes with strawberry frosting for a friend's football themed baby shower.

Minnie Mouse Cake

This Minnie Mouse cake is definitely one of my favorite cakes made to date.  It was requested by a friend for her daughter's 5th birthday.  I have seen this design done plenty of times and I was very excited to finally get the chance to replicate it.

The cake was 2 tiers of chocolate cake with oreos and oreo buttercream filling with a vanilla bean buttercream frosting.  All decorations were made with store bought fondant.  The ears and the bow were the only 2 things I made in advance.  I loved that the details were very simple (a lot of circles) but once the cake was assembled, it made quite the statement.

Train Theme Cake

Worked on another birthday cake this past weekend.  This time I got to make a cake for a boy turning 3.  I kept this cake a bit more simple by sticking to buttercream and fondant accents.  Also, instead of making Henry the Train out of fondant or whatever, I picked up a toy that he could just keep afterwards.

This cake came together with minimal amounts of hiccups.  If you remember, I couldn't wait to go back to this theme since it was last done for a Cake4Kids recipient.  I made sure that the train tracks made its way onto the board this time.  Also, it was great to have this cake turn out the way I imagined given I also made this boy's first birthday cake.  That cake almost broke me when nothing would turn out as planned.

Cake is 6in (2 layers) and 8in (3 layers) tiers of chocolate cake and chocolate frosting.  I used Pure Madagascar Vanilla Extract in the frosting for the first time and I am hooked on it now.  I wish I had a picture of the inside for you.  I have started to use an Ice Cream Scooper to measure out how much frosting I put in between each layer and it looks a lot nicer now.

Alice in Wonderland Cake

This past weekend, I had the pleasure of making an Alice in Wonderland cake for a 4 year old's birthday party.  I had fun creating subtle references to the Mad Hatter, Cheshire Cat, and "Queen of" Hearts with this cake.

The flavor of choice was chocolate cake with oreo buttercream frosting.  I didn't think to make the oreo buttercream frosting just a filling.  So, this cake is actually filled and crumb coated with oreo buttercream frosting.  It made it a bit difficult to smoothly cover in fondant.

I gave this cake a mini topsy turvy look by trimming down the top tier.  I forgot to place the trimmed piece back on top of the cake to give it more of a slant.  It probably would've gave the cake a bit more support too as the layers of fondant weighed it down a bit.  The wrinkles at the bottom bothered me quite a bit.

Because I didn't want the hat to look squatty; I made it with 3 layer of cakes.  I love the height/look of the cake with the 3 layers.  Going forward, this will probably be the standard for cakes smaller than 6 inches.

Nyan Cat Cake

This cake for my brother's girlfriend was one of my most fun cakes to make to date.  It's based off of the viral YouTube video featuring the Nyan Cat.  True to form, I made sure to use a cherry Pop Tart for it's body which I had a friend confirm that it was definitely a cherry pop tart and not any other flavor.

 My favorite part was waiting for her to cut open the cake to reveal the rainbow center.  I used my go to white cake recipe, divided the batter into six separate bowls, and added a few drops of dye to each bowl.  To save myself time, instead of baking six separate layers, especially given I only have 2 8-inch pans, I layered 3 different colors in each pan.  I made sure to pour the batter of the top layer (red, orange, yellow) in reverse order because I knew I would flip it over when I stacked/frosted the cake.

This cake definitely brought back a lot of cake methods/tools I haven't used for awhile to save on some time as I have been busy.  Come to think of it, I haven't made a decorated cake for quite some time!  I used my tylose powder/water glue to hold the fondant to the pop tart.  I used the paper towel method to smooth the frosting.  I used food color markers to outline the cat for the 8-bit look.  I used my clay tool for all the fondant pieces that required even lines.

All Star Sports Cake

6" and 8" blue velvet cake with vanilla butter cream frosting and fondant accents.

I made this cake for my friend's nephew's sports theme birthday party.   Last year, I made him a race car track cake for his hot wheels theme birthday party.  In addition to this cake, I made two dozen of  the very same oreo cupcakes because they were such a huge hit last year.

Inspiration for this cake came from many of the cakes on Cake Central with the same theme.

Chococat Cake

It's getting a lot harder for me to take pictures in natural light around this time of year!  My brother was taking this cake to work the next morning and I was only able to snap a few shots before bed.

This cake reminded me on how much I dislike using store bought fondant to cover an entire cake.  The last time I covered an entire cake in fondant, I ended up ripping a lot of the smooth edges off my cake and redoing it.  Fortunately, no edges were ripped off but the cold weather made it extremely difficult to knead the store bought fondant.

Cake was chocolate cake with strawberry frosting as requested by recipient.  I hope she enjoyed it!

Hello Kitty Cake - Full Body

Hello Kitty seems to be extremely popular amongst my friends.  I have made Hello Kitty cakes for several birthdays as well as a baby shower now.  This time around, the recipient requested a full body Hello Kitty.  This cake requires minimal fondant decorations; however, don't let that fool you.  It took me a bit of time trying to figure out how to exactly cut out the clothes to cover the fondant body in 2d fashion.  Also, I actually made the body and head separately and placed the two cakes together on the board at the end.  I don't know whether that was smarter or not but it worked out for me luckily.

I got to try out a new recipe combo on this cake as the birthday girl wanted mocha cake and buttercream frosting.  I used this tried and true recipe for cupcakes from Brown Eyed Baker which thankfully converted nicely to cake as well.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Cake

This isn't the fall-esque baked goods I promised; however, it is my brother's birthday today.  As a child of the 80s, there was nothing more fitting than making him a TMNT cake.  Last year, I knew I wanted to make him the Optimus Prime cake but this year I had no idea how to improve upon that. My sister came up with this great idea, even sketching me the picture to follow.  I love that it is very different from the typical TNMT cake.  I am partial to believe she just wanted to make cute fondant animals again given she did an awesome job helping with my last cake.

For this cake, I dabbled with isomalt for the first time.  We used an empty paper towel roll wrapped in parchment paper.  Once the isomalt was ready to work with, we quickly wrapped it around the tube and cut out the paper tube once it set.  Then, we cracked it to have all the ooze spilling out.  The ooze was simply frosting dyed green.

Because I didn't know how else I would write his name in "teenage mutant ninja turtle" font as my sister suggested, I did a frozen butter cream transfer using a computer print out I did of his name in said font.

Additional cake details - The cake was strawberry cake (a mash up/adaptation of my two favorite white cakes, here and here) with vanilla butter cream frosting, covered and decorated in store bought and homemade fondant.

Winter Wonderland Cake

As I mentioned in my previous post, Cake4Kids held their inaugural Cake-Off4Kids Event last Saturday. There were about 50 cakes and 250 volunteers, family, friends, and supporters of Cake4Kids present to help Cake4Kids raise funds for their push to file for non profit status.   Even after putting in a lot of behind the scenes work for this event, I knew I wanted to bake a cake for the competition too.

This 6-8-10 tier white cake (from Baking Illustrated) with buttercream frosting covered in marshmallow fondant is my largest/heaviest/tallest cake to date.

The theme was inspired by my love of penguins.  I had a lot of help from my sister who made most of the fondant animals while I baked a lot of cake.

I have been using A Better White Scratch Cake recipe from Cake Central for over a year now but the recipe from Baking Illustrated is my new official go to white cake.  It was so light and fluffy and moist.  It probably isn't ideal for stacking and carving but given the right support, you can apparently stack anything.  And, in this case, I was able to carve out a portion of it for a slide.  I should've done the cut all the way around but I wasn't sure how it would hold up. Also, I baked the top tier in the Wilton Sports Ball pan instead of carving it for the same reason.

My 8-inch cake pans are actually 8.5 inches in diameter.  Hence, when placed on top of the 10-inch tier, there was absolutely no space to place the penguins.  Not pictured are three of the penguins which I simply had standing around on the back of the cake instead of my planned snowball fight.

My favorite one, if I had to pick, is the penguin making snow angels!  Again, due to lack of space, he had to be on top of the igloo but I think it sort of works.

Transporting the cake to the location 20 minutes away was nerve wrecking.  I have to thank my boyfriend for staying calm and getting us there in one piece.

Taking part in this event, from start to finish, was a lot of fun; the sweetest part was winning the best decorated category!

Elmo Cake

My nephew celebrated his first birthday over the weekend!  Of course, I had to offer to make a cake for the occasion.  When my cousin told me he loves Elmo, I was so happy to get the chance to redeem myself as I made one last year for a friend and the cake was a disaster for me.

This turned out exactly as planned, to a point, thankfully.  This was a standard white cake with vanilla buttercream frosting.  For some crazy reason, I thought royal icing would be a great idea to make Elmo's fur.  I should've stuck to buttercream frosting and a #234 pastry tip.  Also, when I carved out the shape of Elmo's face/head, because I used an 8-inch square cake, I had these straight sides.  So, I fixed that by adding some cake spackle - a mixture of cake and buttercream frosting.  After the crumb coat, you can't even tell.

Batman Cake (Cake4Kids.org)

I finally got a chance to bake another Cake4Kids cake.  I don't think I have made one since January!  This one was a doctored white cake mix cake with vanilla buttercream frosting.  I used a mix of homemade and store bought fondant to cover and decorate the cake.  One of my favorite cakes for this organization to date.  Simple and sweet.

iPad Cake

I can't believe how fast kids are growing up these days.  A year ago, my nephew requested a Spongebob Square Pants cake for 9th birthday.  When I asked him what he wanted me to make for him this year, he replied with an iPad cake and all the apps!

This cake was a white almond sour cream cake (adapted from Cake Central) with strawberry swiss meringue buttercream (adapted from Martha Stewart's Cupcakes).  The frosting didn't hold up well with all of the fondant laying on top.  I noticed a lot of bulging and air pockets later on.  Next time, I would treat it as a filling and use a sturdier frosting as a dam. 

The details were  made with a mix of store bought and home made fondant.  I used royal icing on the cake and an edible food marker on the banner for the lettering.  The bottom was heavily coated with silver luster dust.  I say heavily because I realized too late that I didn't have enough white fondant.  So, I ended up mixing together all my available fondant and I happened to have a lot of pink fondant.

Just like last year, he wasn't shy about pointing out my mistake.  I forgot the camera lens.  But we fixed that by sticking the candle there.  Overall, he was very happy with his cake as I was to make it for him.

A Giant Cupcake Cake

I'm not really sure where this Killer Cupcake is from but it was on my brother's girlfriend's Evite for her birthday party this past weekend.  Last year, I made her the R2D2 cake and Star Wars sugar cookies; and it was my sister's great idea to make the Killer Cupcake on the Evite into a cake for her this year.

I have been waiting for an excuse to make a giant cupcake cake with a candy liner since I've seen it done around the blogosphere.

I've used a mix of blue candy melts and white chocolate bark to make the cupcake liner.  After two coats and 30 minutes total in the fridge, it popped right out of the pan.  Reminded me of the time I made the cupcake bites (cake truffles).

The cake didn't fit perfectly into the candy liner so I did trim the edges a bit.  Because of the lack of frosting covering the bottom layer, I did torte it 2 times and piled the frosting on.

I also torted the top half of the cake, filled, and crumb coated it with frosting before covering it with fondant.  Because the top layer ended up narrower than the bottom with the candy liner, I trimmed the fondant a bit wider to make it appear like the "frosting" is spilling over.

With the leftover batter and frosting, I made some cupcakes as well.  The yellow cake is one of my go to recipes while the chocolate frosting was a new one from Hershey's.  I do not know why it took me this long to discover this frosting.  It is one of the simplest frostings I've come across while tasting so rich and full of chocolate flavor.  Definitely, adding this to my go to list.

UPDATE: The cupcake image which was on the Evite that I was inspired by is by Natalie Dee.

Angry Birds Sugar Cookies

It's my friend's 30th birthday today and I'm flying out to San Diego as we speak to help her celebrate this weekend!  I didn't want to risk making a cake or cupcakes and having it confiscated at the security check point; so, I decided on something I can easily pack into my carry on bag, sugar cookies.  She is as addicted to the Angry Birds game as I am so I knew this would be a cute and fun gift.

After sketching out the images and writing up the schematics, I got a bit nervous with how much work it would be for me.  My sugar cookie decorating skills are very limited.  But then, I realized that I could just use fondant!  Having never tasted fondant on a sugar cookie, I definitely made sure that these cookies were nice and thick.  I even found the greatest way to measure the thickness of the cookies; I rolled the dough out in between two chopsticks I had laying around which measured 1/4 inch thick exactly!

Chic Birthday Cake

By adding a bow to the cake, I turned it from simple to chic!  This cake was made from the extra chocolate cake layers and peanut butter frosting I had saved in the freezer from the Hello Kitty Baby Shower cake I made the other week.  I sampled some of the trimmings when I was reshaping the cake and I swear it seemed more moist than the first time around.

When I freeze my cake layers, I triple wrap it in saran wrap and then place in it a Ziploc bag.  The cakes can be frozen for up to two months without losing its flavor.  When I need to use it, depending on whether I'm carving or not, I'll thaw it slightly or completely before use.

Nikon D5000 Cake

It has been a little over a year since I made what I thought at the time was my first "show stopping" cake per my sister's request.  The cake requests are definitely getting more creative and complex.  However, I can't complain as I am definitely learning a lot along the way.

My cousin, a photography hobbyist, celebrated his birthday last week and as a gift to him, I made him a cake replica of his camera per his request.  Having a lot of images to go by helps a lot.  After looking at several images of the camera online, I realized it was similar to my own Nikon D60. So, I actually used that as a model and then piped on his camera model at the end.

This was my first time carving without a template; so scary! I started with a 2 layer 8-inch square red velvet cake with vanilla buttercream frosting which I cut in half and then proceeded to carve. After sending a quick picture of it to my boyfriend, he commented that it was too small.  So, I added another layer to the top and to the side.  I also changed the jutting top piece into a trapezoid from a square the second time around.





I used store bought fondant to cover the cake and it was a nightmare to work with that day.  I couldn't get it as pliable as I wanted/needed and my first attempt ended with way too wrinkles.  So, I ripped it all off and started over.  That resulted in losing all my sharp edges but nothing cake spackle couldn't fix.

I realize I don't take any pictures of the lens in the making!  It was made of store bought rice krispies treats I smashed together and covered in two layers of fondant to avoid the lumps and bumps.  Pearl luster dust mixed with vodka gave the perfect illusion of a glare for the lens.



 



 

My two personal favorite details on the cake was sneaking my dog Patches onto the back screen and the personalized camera strap.  I love the trim I was able to put onto the strap with my Wilton cutter/embosser wheel.  I learned that I need to work on my piping skills; it took me five attempts to just pipe the words Nikon and D5000 onto the cake correctly!

Hot Wheels Theme Birthday

I had the pleasure of making this cake for a friend's nephew's Hot Wheels theme birthday last weekend.  As soon as she mentioned the theme to me, I knew I wanted to make a race track.  I decided not to cover the entire cake in fondant and I'm so glad that the paper towel method worked very well with my frosting this time around.

The cake was hand carved from an 8 inch square yellow cake using a template my brother created for me.  I filled, crumb coated, frosted, and decorated with vanilla buttercream frosting.  The only fondant I used were the red and black pieces.  The cars are from a Hot Wheels candle set I picked up from Party City.


Filled, stacked, carved.

Crumb coated.

Frosted.

Smoothed out.

In addition to the race car track cake, I made a dozen oreo cupcakes for the party.  I loved the oreo on the bottom concept from the oreo cheesecakes that I used it with the cupcakes.  The cupcakes were my go to white cake with chopped oreos and the frosting was my go to vanilla buttercream frosting with crushed oreos.